My Wife and My Dead Wife

by Michael Kun

  When I show up at Carl’s office, his secretary tells me to sit in one of the leather chairs outside his office because he’s on a telephone call. Only she says it’s a “teleconference,” which must mean it’s important. Which means my call with Renée about not having any money in the bank was a teleconference.

  Carl’s secretary’s name is Cecily. She’s been his secretary for at least five years, maybe longer. She’s pretty, with a thin waist and long, fluffy black hair like the girls in Renée’s magazines. If I wasn’t living with Renée, I would probably ask Cecily on a date. You can tell she wears pretty underwear. Today she’s wearing a thin, beige blouse. You can see that she’s wearing a white camisole underneath. You can hear your heart racing whenever you see her.

  “Ham, can I get you some coffee while you’re waiting,” Cecily says to me.

  I say, “No, thank you.”

  She says, “We also have tea and soda.”

  “Are you sure you didn’t used do be a stewardess in a previous life?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Well, you sure are attractive enough to be a stewardess.”

  She smiles a little, then says, “You’re very sweet, Ham.” That’s when I notice that she has an engagement ring on. An engagement ring and a frilly white camisole. Whoever she’s marrying is a lucky dog. I’ll bet she doesn’t go out buying tape recorders without talking with him first.

  It’s five minutes that I’m sitting in the chair across from Cecily. I try to make myself stop thinking about the camisole, but then I find myself thinking about the tape recorder. And when I try not to think about THAT, I find myself thinking about that stupid song of Renée’s, the song about the dog. I’m thinking, I love you, Winona, forever. When Cecily looks up at me over her computer, I realize that I’m humming the song out loud.

  “It’s a song,” I say.

  And she says, “That would have been my guess.”

  “My girlfriend wrote it.”

  “That’s nice. What’s it about?”

  I lie and say, “It’s about a trip to Paris.” I’m not about to tell her the truth.

  The little red light on Cecily’s phone flicks off, and she says, “He’s off the phone now, Ham. You can go in,” which I do.

  Carl’s office is huge. It’s almost as big as my entire apartment. You could fall down in his office and not hit your head on anything, that’s how big it is. In our apartment, you can’t even bend over without giving yourself a concussion. It’s still a nice apartment, though.

  “It’s good to see you, buddy,” Carl says when I walk in. There’s the picture of him from the newspaper in a frame right behind him, so it’s almost like seeing double. The same slightly off-center smile, the same slicked-back hair. When I reach Carl, he shakes my hand. He’s wearing a navy blue suit with a white shirt and a red tie. The tie has little curlicues on it, like fish hooks. He’s a good dresser. He shops at the expensive mall.

  I say, “It’s good to see you, too. When did Cecily get engaged?”

  “Last month. Some guy who works for a computer company.”

  “Well, good for her.”

  Carl says, “Not sure I trust the guy, but it’s not my place to say anything. But, oh, never mind. To what do I owe the pleasure of this visit?”

  And I say, “Remember the five hundred dollars you lent me a couple weeks ago?”

  And he says, “Yes.”

  And I say, “Darn it, I was hoping you’d forgotten.”

  And he winks at me and says, “It’s forgotten, buddy.”

  That’s the way Carl is. He likes to wink, and he likes to shake hands, and he likes to call people “buddy.” That’s the way I imagine most lawyers are. Winking, shaking, calling you “buddy.” Pretending they’re not afraid of things.

  I say, “I’m just joking, Carl. I promise to pay it back to you, but I was wondering if maybe you could lend me another hundred dollars. It’s just that —”

  He doesn’t even wait for me to explain about the tape recorder. Instead, he holds up a hand beside his face and says, “Hey, it’s no problem,” and he opens his top desk drawer and removes his checkbook. Then, very quickly, he scribbles on one of the checks, pulls it out of the checkbook, folds it in half and hands it to me the way your grandfather slips you a couple dollars when your parents aren’t looking. I open it up. It says “One hundred dollars and 00 cents” on it in perfect handwriting, just like they teach you in school.

  “Thanks, Carl,” I say. “I really promise I’ll get it back to you.”

  And he says, “Whenever you get a chance. But it’s okay if you don’t.” It’s hard to tell if he is being nice or if he pities me. Either way, it’s fine with me. I need the money. I’m getting hungry.

  That’s when I say, “Listen, Carl, there was actually something else I wanted to talk with you about while I was down here.”

  And he says, “You didn’t quit your job, did you?”

  And I say, “Worse.”

  And he says, “You killed your boss?”

  And I laugh and say, “I can’t say it’s never crossed my mind, but, no, I didn’t kill my boss. Actually, it’s about a puppy.”

  Carl gets a funny look on his face, his eyebrows curling toward his nose, and he gestures for me to sit down in one of the big, overstuffed chairs across from his desk. Everything on his desk is perfect. The papers are all in neat piles. The pens are all arranged in a coffee cup. The coffee cup has golf clubs painted on it. They’re crossed like swords.

  I sit down across from Carl and I tell him everything. I tell him all about Renée, and about how she lost her job at the hospital, and how she’s taking the guitar lessons. I tell him about the cakes and pies and cookies. I tell him about the cowboy outfit and the tape recorder, and then I tell him about “Winona Forever.” I even sing part of it for him:

  No matter the day,

  No matter the weather,

  I love you, Winona,

  Winona, forever.

  “It’s a love song to a dog?” he says.

  And I say, “Yes.”

  And he says, “A dog dog?”

  “What?”

  And he says, “Maybe she’s using the word ‘dog’ to refer to a person, like rap singers do when they refer to their friends. Like when they say, ‘You don’t want to mess with MY dogs.’” His voice deepens and he makes quotation marks in the air with two fingers on each hand when he says “MY dogs.”

  And then, sarcastically, I say, “That’s right, Carl, she’s a rap singer. She sings songs about ‘ho’s’ and about how she wants to ‘bust a cap’ in someone, and she refers to people as ‘dogs.’”

  And he says, “I was just brainstorming.”

  I say, “I appreciate it, but she’s not referring to a person when she says ‘dog.’ Besides, there’s part of the song where the dog is sitting on her lap licking food off her fingers. No, she’s singing about a real dog. A dog dog.”

  “So maybe she just had a dog once that she really loved,” Carl says.

  “That’s just it, Carl—she’s never had a dog.”

  “Never?”

  “Never. I asked her mother once when she called, and she said Renée’s never had a dog. Heck, she’s never even had a cat.”

  Carl scratches the tip of his nose like he’s thinking, then he says, “What does that mean, `She’s never had a cat’?”

  And I say, “What kind of person has never had a dog or a cat?”

  And he says, “A lot of people have never had a pet.”

  And I say, “We did,” which is true. We had a beagle named Clementine.

  And he says, “But we never had a cat.”

  And I say, “Lots of people have never had a cat.”

  Then Carl says, “Maybe the dog in the song represents something. Maybe the dog is a metaphor for lost innocence. Maybe it’s a metaphor for, well, I don’t know what it could be a metaphor for, but maybe it’s a metaphor.”

  And I say, “No, it’s about a dog,
Carl. I’ve resigned myself to that. It’s about a stupid dog who runs away from home, then comes back.”

  “And it’s missing an ear?”

  “Yes.”

  And Carl says, “Which ear?”

  And I say, “Does it matter?”

  And he says, “Not really,” and shrugs.

  And I say, “That’s where this whole thing leads to a legal issue.”

  And he says, “This dog that doesn’t even exist leads to a legal issue?”

  And I say, “Sort of. Here’s the legal question I was hoping you could answer. Let’s say there’s this guy and he’s living with this girl. And let’s say they’re living together for a long, long time. A couple years, let’s say. And let’s say he NEVER asks her to marry him, and they NEVER get a marriage license, and they NEVER have a wedding ceremony or anything like that, okay? Now, at some point in time, just because they’re living together, are they considered to be man and wife? You know, are they considered to be a married couple as far as the law goes?”

  Carl starts smiling. “Renée thinks you’re married?” he says.

  And I say, “She doesn’t just think we’re married, she’s telling everyone we’re married. We get bills in the mail addressed to `Mrs. Renée Ashe.’ Carl, I swear, there’s NO SUCH PERSON AS MRS. RENEE ASHE.”

  And he says, “So where’s this coming from?”

  “She says it’s something called a common-law marriage. She says that just because we’ve lived together for so long, it means we’re considered to be married. That’s crazy, isn’t it? I mean, she’s out of her mind, right? Right?””

  “Well, she’s right about common-law marriages,” and I can’t catch my breath. I feel like I do when some food goes down the wrong pipe. “She’s right as long as you’ve been holding yourself out to the public as man and wife for ten years.”

  I start to breathe again. “Ten years. I haven’t even known her for ten years,” I say. “You know that. And that business about holding yourself out—what’s that?”

  “It means, do you tell people you’re husband and wife?”

  “I don’t, that’s for sure.”

  Carl says, “Congratulations. By the powers vested in me by the state of Georgia, I hereby proclaim you not man and wife.” So there’s a legal opinion, from a LAWYER, that Renée and I are NOT married.

  I say, “Thank God.”

  And Carl says, “God had nothing to do with this one. Now, do you want my opinion as to whether or not you should marry Renée?”

  I already know his opinion: he thinks we should get married. Every time we have dinner at his house, he and his wife Judy will pull me aside in the kitchen and say, “You really should marry her, Ham.” But I don’t want to hear his opinion now, so I say, “No, I only came here for some legal advice, not romantic advice. Besides, I already got married once, and look how that worked out.”

  It didn’t work out too well, to say the least.

  And Carl says, “Well, for what it’s worth, I happen to think she’s great.”

  And I say, “She wrote a love song to a dog, Carl. A dog with one ear.”

  “Oh, yeah, I’d already blocked that out of my mind.”

  “Well, don’t.”

  Then I go back to work.

  The rest of the day, every time I try not to think of Cecily’s camisole, I think of the tape recorder Renée bought.

  And every time I try not to think of the tape recorder, I end up thinking about that stupid song about the DOG.

  And every time I try not to think about THAT, I end up thinking about Renée mispronouncing my name. Hay-yum. Hay-yum. Hay-yum.

  x

  I know I have an unusual first name. I’m not stupid.

  Once, a long time ago when I was in high school, my mother told me how I got my name. I was sitting at the kitchen table while she was cooking dinner.

  Out of the clear blue sky, my mother said, “You know, Ham, you will never forget your first love. Never.”

  And I said, “Is that right? Who was yours?”

  I thought she’d say my father, but she didn’t. Instead, she said, “Well, we never talk about it, but I was engaged to another boy before your father. His name was Hamilton Cray, and he was just the most handsome man you’d ever want to meet. Handsome and quite an athlete. We got engaged on the night of our senior prom, and then he joined the service. The military service, I mean. He wrote me the most beautiful letters, which I kept for years and years, even after your father and I married. They were very lyrical. You might even say poetic. Your father finally asked me to throw them out when we were moving here. That’s a small sacrifice to make for your husband, I think.”

  So I said, “So you named me after him?”

  And she said, “What?”

  And I said, “So you named me after your first boyfriend, Hamilton Cray?”

  And my mother turned her back to me. She may even have blushed, it was hard to say.

  After a while, she said, “Why on earth would you think that?”

  I said, “Because his name was Hamilton, and my name is Hamilton.”

  She turned around and waved a wooden spoon at me and said, “Whatever you do, don’t tell your father.”

  And I said, “What do you mean, don’t tell him?”

  And she said, “He doesn’t know.”

  And I said, “What do you mean, he doesn’t know. You’d have to be an idiot not to figure it out.” Her boyfriend’s name was Hamilton. My name is Hamilton. It doesn’t take a private detective to figure it out. It’d be like having a child name Michelangelo, then saying you didn’t name him after THE Michelangelo.”

  She reached out and squeezed my elbow, and she said, “Whatever you do, just don’t tell him.”

  I promised her. And I didn’t tell my father. Although a few weeks later, when we were driving to Atlanta to see a baseball game, I asked him where my name came from, just to see what he would say.

  “Heck if I know,” he said. “Your mother picked it out. I’m sure it was the name of someone she knew, like an uncle or something. She probably explained it to me, but I have to admit my radar only picks up about forty percent of what your mother says.” Then he put his hand on my wrist and said, “Whatever you do, don’t tell her I said that.”

  That was when I was in the ninth grade. The next year, I ran for class president. I shook hands, and I painted posters and passed out buttons that said, ELECT HAMILTON ASHE FOR A BETTER TENTH GRADE. It was very exciting, but in the end I lost the election to a pretty Irish girl named Shellie O’Connell. She had red hair and freckles on her nose, and she was a cheerleader. Her campaign posters, which she taped up right next to mine, read “HAM IS A PIG!”

  I ended up marrying her five years later.

  SHE knew how to say my name.

  “Ham is a pig,” she would say, not “Hay-yum is a pig.”

  CHAPTER 3: BLESSED ARE THE LITTLE FISHIES

  My first marriage didn’t work out too well, to say the least.

  My ONLY marriage.

  I grew up in a town called Cadbury, Georgia. “Cadbury,” like the chocolate bars. It’s a fishing town not far from Savannah. Fish and shrimp. Shellie and I both went to Cadbury High School, as did Carl. The name of the sports teams was the Cadbury Poets, which seemed like a silly name for a sports team at the time.

  What do sports and poetry have to do with each other?

  Only now, the name seems very sweet to me: the Cadbury Poets.

  Carl and I played for the basketball team, though I hardly ever got off the bench. Carl was the starting center. He was tall and fast. He’d salt away 20 points a game, and the girls loved him. Me, I played guard sometimes because I was a pretty good dribbler. Not good enough to start, though. There was always someone better. Sometimes there were two boys who were better.

  While I sat on the bench, the cheerleaders would jump and dance and sing our school cheer right in front of me. They would be so close I could touch them if I wanted to. They’d
sing:

  Keats, Yeats, Browning, Frost,

  The Cadbury Poets have never lost.

  Shellie was one of the cheerleaders, though I didn’t know her very well. She was too pretty for me, with those freckles and that red hair and those short, short skirts that showed her legs while she was jumping up and down in front of me, calling out the names of Keats, Yeats, Browning and Frost.

  Then she started with that “HAM IS A PIG” business.

  x

  “What happened in Cadbury isn’t for the weak of heart.” That’s what my mother would say.

  She was right: it wasn’t for the weak of heart. Or the weak of stomach, for that matter. It was in the newspapers. The newspapers had pictures of it. The newspapers often have pictures, which isn’t always good for those who are weak of heart. Or stomach.

  Cadbury is where the body was found. Actually, the body parts. Hands. Legs. Feet. Ears. You name it. Body parts that only doctors could dream of. The coroner had to put the body together like a model airplane. They wrote about it in the newspapers, and it wasn’t a story for the weak of heart. There were pictures. One article said that the boy was put back together with his right arm where his left arm should have been, and vice versa. The report, it turned out, was false. My father asked the coroner himself.

  Cadbury isn’t the sort of town where people murder each other. But it happened anyway, there’s no denying it. It’s not the only town where murders happen, though. Far from it. I don’t know how many hundreds or thousands of murders occur each year, but I know one thing: they all happen somewhere. And, most of the time I’d bet you’ll find someone saying, “This is not the sort of town where people murder each other.”

  Except in New York. In New York if someone gets murdered, they probably say, “Big deal. Happens every day,” which is why I don’t like to go to New York. I went there once. Once was enough in my book.

  x

  After I graduated from high school, I interviewed for a job with a large soda company right here in Atlanta. I wore a suit and tie that my parents had bought me at Smalls’ Clothing in Cadbury. Smalls’ Clothing was the largest clothing store in Cadbury. It was just a rinky-dink little place no bigger than a hamburger stand.